


i’m sorry for asking (but please come take me home)

by interestobscura



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Riley-centric, TW alcoholism, daemon AU, riley is bi don't @ me, tw for drug use, tw panic attacks, tw self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-08 10:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestobscura/pseuds/interestobscura
Summary: Morgan settles when Riley turns twelve.Hexed, Riley thinks when Morgan flutters down to perch on her shoulder, black as the stony rocks that line the beach where her mother’s ashes were snatched away by the frigid ocean wind.Riley dreams of caves, of women in white, of the Hidden People, and when she wakes it’s to the echo of accusations.





	1. burned down on the edge of the highway

**Author's Note:**

> *strolls up coffee in hand a year after season 2, the cancellation, and the feature film*: yo whaddup
> 
> in case you missed it in the tags: mentions of drug abuse, description of panic attacks, light mention of alcoholism, implied self harm and gratuitous prejudice against the city of london. 
> 
> sorry, londoners.

Morgan settles when Riley turns twelve.

 _Hexed_ , Riley thinks when Morgan flutters down to perch on her shoulder, black as the stony rocks that line the beach where her mother’s ashes were snatched away by the frigid ocean wind. Morgan says nothing, a sharp contrast to his usual chatterbox self. He used to be her mouthpiece, the lyrics to her quiet heartbeat, but now even that song has fallen silent.

Riley dreams of caves, of women in white, of the Hidden People, and when she wakes it’s to the echo of accusations.

//

She’s seventeen and in love, and Mogan flits endlessly around Magnus’s daemon, tugging playfully at Aríela’s fur, nudging at her tail, nesting comfortably beside her belly as she naps before the fire. Riley’s own affection is less pronounced, she gives him small, stolen kisses behind classroom doors, smiles shyly and ducks her head whenever he gives her things, and so many things he has given, flowers, cards, balloons, even a brand new set of headphones in her favourite colour - that eventually even she gives up being embarrassed.

She jokes that he’s her white knight, he shows up on graduation day with a honest-to-god _horse_ , and they get married straight out of high school. Riley still dreams of the Hidden People, but their scathing words are easier to ignore with Magnus there to tell her otherwise. Two years later, she’s pregnant, and happier than she’s ever been.

Nine months pass, and Riley Gunnarsdóttir realises too late that she should’ve paid more attention to her nightmares.

//

The weeks, months after pass in a blur.

Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, France. The scenery changes, the people don’t. Riley soon learns which ones to avoid, which ones are good for a quick fuck, which ones will supply her with what she needs without too many questions. She spends most of her time trying to escape reality - music, drugs, sex, repeat. She picks up languages fast, picks up bad habits even faster. She gets her first tattoo, an sideways infinity at the base of her neck. Bleaches her hair, tells herself that she’s leaving the past behind her. A day later and she's buying a bottle of blue dye, the colour of Magnus’s eyes, of her mother’s earrings, of Iceland, and cries in the bathroom, blue irrevocably staining the off-white porcelain of her cheap motel sink.

She meets Georges in Paris, DJing at her club, and afterwards they go for drinks. Georges takes one look at her and asks Riley if she has anywhere to stay, offers her place when she shakes her head no. Morgan stays quiet when she asks, so Riley takes it, and for a few months everything is fine. Good, even. Georges has a too-blunt way of speaking, and no qualms calling Riley out on her bullshit, but she’s kind. She knows when to leave Riley alone, knows when it’s okay to touch. She’s gentle, when she wants to be. Charming, too, and unlike most of the people Riley’s ‘dated’, she doesn’t have the same condescending, cocksure assumption of ownership.

For a while life teeters into the bearable zone, and that’s what does it, in the end. Riley wakes up one morning feeling the comforting heat of another body sleeping next to hers, and immediately that lazy, post-sleep warmth tips over into overwhelming panic. Because she can’t stay, because she’s cursed, because this feeling, this comfort, is a _betrayal_.

She stumbles out of bed, sheets tangling in her flailing limbs and jerking Georges awake. In her mind’s eye Riley can see the face of her husband, her child, staring lifelessly, accusingly, at her direction. She sees the damp cave, the Hidden People, she sees the grey-steel eyes of a woman telling her she can’t stay, she can’t stay, she needs to leave she needs to leave _now_.

Georges is talking to her, but Riley can’t hear anything beyond the rushing of her own blood, her own heartbeat in her ears. The screeching of car tires. Her nails dig half-moons into her wrists, and she remembers the way her head had hit the dashboard, the shock overwhelming the pain. There’s a hand on her arm, warm like fresh blood, except _that_ warmth slowly seeps away, leaving you colder than before, and this one doesn’t.

Slowly Riley becomes aware of her body, trembling, feels the silent tears that drip down to her bare legs, pinpoints of ice-cold. She takes a shuddering breath, another, and another. Beside her, Morgan caws, helpless.

“ _Aumingi_ ,” she swears softly to herself.

“Are you alright?” Georges says gently. They both know the answer, but Riley shakes her head anyway.

She leaves the next day, and Georges doesn’t ask, doesn’t try to stop her. She only smiles a little sadly, says “visit anytime, chérie,” and blows her a kiss.

Riley turns, walks, and doesn’t look back.

//

She goes to London. She doesn’t like it there, exactly. It’s streets are constantly dirty, the air full of smoke and caustic laughter. Its buildings are old, stately, proud. Riley stays, because its atmosphere is as far from Iceland’s as it can get. She misses her home, but London, with its dizzying fervour, is easy to get lost in. The drugs come easy, and she gives her stage name as Riley Blue. It only takes a few weeks to make a name for herself, the Icelandic DJ with the weird accent and sick beats. She never talks about her past beyond stating her birth country, and gets proficient at skirting her history.

It only ever seems to make her more appealing, men more determined to break into the walls of that “Blue chick,” and after a while she finds she can use the mystery to her advantage. Morgan circles the crowd while she DJs, flying low and unseen through the blinding strobe lights and writhing bodies, picks out the men that stare a little too long. Riley sidles up to them after her set, asks for a light, shares a smoke. Often it goes a little like this: they’ll compliment her, she’d smile, look down, and they’d offer to get her a drink.

Alcohol numbs, and warms. Riley is cold all the time in London. It’s different from the winter cold of Iceland, where the clear, clean chill sweeps through the mountains and cleanses the air. London cold seeps in slowly, insidiously, until all you can feel is the bone-deep chill that Riley slowly becomes inured to.

She meets Jacks when he comes up to her after a set, enthusiastically slinging an arm around her like they’ve known each other for years. Morgan ruffles his feathers, takes off from his usual perch on her shoulder.

“You spin good, for a _girl_ ,” he slurs, his tongue curling around the elongated word. She shrugs his arm off, mutters a quick “thanks,” and makes to leave.

He catches her arm, and a quick glance down at the gnarled scars that are half-hidden behind her bracelets is all he needs to know.

“I’ve got some coke, and I don’t mind sharing,” he says quickly. “The good stuff too, none of that watered down shit.”

“Bad idea,” Morgan tells her, but doesn’t protest further when she follows the Brit. They both know how much she needs this, and she’s running paycheck to paycheck these days. She literally can’t afford to give it up. The withdrawals alone will put her out of commission too long.

So she follows.

//

Angelica shoots herself, and suddenly Riley’s life becomes something akin to a storybook legend. She flashes to the church, and a familiar man is there, standing over the ruined mattress, his dog daemon standing alert at his feet. The man looks up at his daemon’s nudge, and suddenly they’re face to face, once again.  


“Uh... Hi.”

She smiles at his hesitance, and Morgan flutters off her shoulder, landing directly in front of the man’s daemon. She’s never seen him this bold since the accident.

“This is where she died,” she whispers, and the man looks at her in wonder. She likes his face, friendly and open, warm without any hint of ulterior motivation. It reminds her, unwillingly, of Magnus. It makes her hesitant to speak.

“Where do you live?” He stands up slowly, deliberately, and her eyes quickly flick down, analysing his movements. It’s instinctual, born from the months (has it been a year?) of needing to protect herself. He stops, as if he’s aware of her distrustful gaze. He probably is.

“London,” she says.

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” she tells him, and suddenly it hits her, how amazing this all is, how extraordinary. She looks around at the high arches of the dilapidated church, the sunlight that streams through breaks in the ceilings, giving it an oddly reverent atmosphere. “I don’t know where I am.”

She learns that she’s in America, that she’s in _Chicago_ , and before she can explode with the wonder of that fact she’s brought back to the dark-dank of an apartment down in London, where four people lay unconscious at her feet.

Her mind reeling, she grabs the bag, tries desperately to ignore the familiar tang of blood in the cold, still air, and runs. 


	2. to see if i sleep, or pierce my skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those unfamiliar with his dark materials: daemons are kind of like a physical representation of people's souls/inner selves that take the form of animals, and generally separating a daemon from their human is. bad. very bad.
> 
> also: more explicit mentions of self-harm in this chapter.

_Howling winds whip brown locks painfully against ice-numb skin as Riley staggers onwards, clutching desperately to the bundle in her hands. Before her, Morgan flies endlessly up, up, up, until they’re both crying with the strain of having two parts of their soul ripped further and further apart. The clear blue skies are a punishment, the blinding sunlight a mocking contrast to the deadly ice that coats the skin around her mouth, the frozen tears stuck to her eyelashes._

_Riley looks out at the mosaic of snow and naked rock spreading in every direction for miles and feels the dizzying_ vastness _of the earth pressing down on her slight frame. She can see, in her mind’s eye, the fissures slowly starting to form in her already strained composure. Like cracks in thin ice, the crawling fear splinters up her spine, choking her bit by bit._

_For Luna, she thinks, and takes another step forward._

_Above her, Morgan gives one final push skywards against the unrelenting wind: as one both he and Riley cry out in pain. Riley collapses to one knee, straining against the inexorable pull of her soul. She sends a pleading look at her daemon:_ higher _, she begs,_ you need to go higher.

_But they both know: this is as far as he can go._

_It’s useless. All that is there, as far as a raven’s eye can see, are snow covered mountains, devoid of hope._

//

Riley staggers through the cold London streets, clutching desperately at her bag as Morgan scouts forward, racing ahead and then circling back, unable to hide his agitation. It seems ages pass before she rips her apartment door open, slamming it shut against the frigid outdoors. She races to the bathroom, fighting the urge to throw up, and claws her clothes off with an almost feral intensity.

She’s washing her face when she sees him again: he’s mid-shave, his face adorably confused, and for a second she warms - but then she’s reminded of the blood stains on her face and the drugs in her bag and _oh god he’s a_ **_cop_ ** **-**

Riley can _feel_ the connection abruptly shut down, and it comforts her to know she has at least _some_ control over - whatever this is. With shaking hands, she douses her face in water and scrubs vigorously at her skin. She can feel her fingers start to tremble at the cold shock of tap water, her mind flashing back to the familiar sensation-  

_-blood crusts the ridge of her knuckles, bone peeking through as she smashes through glass and ice-_

“Someone’s here,” Morgan whispers urgently as he lands on her shoulder, shaking her out of the memory, and a second later they both tense at the knocking on her door. “We need to move.”

She hurriedly grabs the bag ( _blood money_ , the demon in her head whispers, but she ignores it) and ducks behind the kitchen counter, trying to control her shuddering breaths. _Too loud_ , she thinks, but her mind is buzzing with images of white and frost, too preoccupied to bother with keeping quiet. The knocking transitions to banging as Morgan digs his talons in her shoulder, aiming to draw blood. The familiar pain helps, lets her take a step back from the edge of her impending panic attack. Riley forces herself to focus, to breathe in. Out. Hold.

The door keels open with a broken shout, and a man storms in, cougar daemon close on his heels. Generic tribal tattoos spiral down the length of his burly arms, highlighting deadly muscle. Riley curls into herself, trying to take as little space as possible, and waits.

The man takes a step forward, and another, and when he clears the kitchen door his daemon sniffs the air. Pauses. Yellow eyes swivel to the edge of the kitchen counter where Riley sits, muscles locked. She can hear the _pad pad pad_ of soft paws in her direction.

Morgan tenses, his claws digging painfully in her shoulder as she mimics him. As soon as the cougar turns the corner, she’s met with a faceful of talons as the raven dives straight for the eyes, shrieking and cawing, drawing attention. Riley bounds past the both of them in the confusion, leaving Morgan to deal with the threats. Safe in the knowledge that she’d left the window open before she left. _Always have an escape route,_ his croaking voice echoes in her ears as she leaps down the stairs, pushes out into the open street.

She’ll meet up with him later. Normally people can’t put more than a five meter distance between their daemons, but she’s different. _They’re_ different. That one experience in the mountains had changed the fundamental makeup of her soul, and the one physical advantage is that she no longer needs to remain attached at the hip to him 24/7.

(There are legends, of course, of others who can do the same, and none of them are good ones. _Farinn sál_ , they’re called, and Icelanders speak of them in quiet, fearful tones. Riley hasn’t told anyone, even her father.)

She bursts out into the streets, ducking and weaving through the crowd, and in a second she’s lost between the shoving masses of a city that cares not for a lost, frightened foreigner. This time, that indifference works to her benefit. She feels Morgan’s familiar grip on her shoulder but a moment later. A quick glance shows he is unhurt, despite the rumpled black feathers and bloody beak.

“We lost them,” he says, brutal. “I nearly took his eye out. He won’t be coming after us now.”

He knows what she’s thinking when she sees him like this, all blood and death, _feels_ it too, that self-same disgust directed internally, down to the hollow bones of his small body. He withers.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quiet, a sudden contrast to his harsh words. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Riley lets out a breath, watches it curl out into the night sky and disappear. “I didn’t listen.”

_Cursed_ , they both think at each other, but neither one says it out loud.

//

_Her father quits the symphony, and just smiles sadly when she asks him about it._

_“It’s okay, baby,” and his eyes do that same crinkle when he looks at her, “Just couldn’t stand to play for old rich people when I could be spending more time with you.”_

_She knows he’s been doing everything in his power to try and help her through this, but all it ever seems to do is make her feel more guilty. Leave me be, she wants to beg, I’m not good for you to be around._

_The piano reverberates through the house almost daily, but it doesn’t sound the same as when she was younger, colouring under the comforting encasement of its wooden legs, old rug soft beneath her young belly. Ever since Magnus, even music has lost its lustre. When previously it brought warmth and joy, now - now all she can hear are echoes. Echoes of a past she can never regain._

There’s almost a sense of freedom when Riley dumps the drugs in the trash, empties the cash in the blind pianist’s case. A snap-second of strength, of willpower, of resistance - things she’s lately been lacking in. Under the glaring white lights of London’s metro tunnels, Riley Blue remembers how it feels like to be herself again.

She laughs, and if it veers slightly into hysterical territory, well.

There’s only her, Morgan, and a blind man as witness.

//

_The sun rises and sets, the snows come and go. Frost slowly melts as the days get longer, the passage of time marked by the growing black of exposed rock and the multitude of small, brightly-coloured weeds poking out from between the mud and dirt. Everything looks gorgeous, the earth finally re-awakening from its long winter sleep._

_Riley hates every second of it._

_“Oh baby,” Gunnar sighs as he sees her staring listlessly out at the cheerful green valley, rife with small birds and budding growth. Her father gently takes the boxcutter from her hands, pocketing it. She can’t bring herself to look at him, can’t bring herself to regret her actions, can’t feel anything despite the red running down the length of her wrist._

_“Riley take my hand,” Gunnar sings, soft and sad. He gently runs a warm washcloth over her injury, his voice breaking like an open wound. “We’ll travel south cross land.”_

_He continues singing and cleaning, finally wrapping a clean bandage around the angry red lines. Gunnar takes his unresponsive daughter’s small hand and kisses it. He looks at her face, so lost and so utterly miserable that his heart aches._

_“It’s only teenage wasteland,” he tells her, but there’s no one around to hear it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh i can't tell if this sucks or not. i don't speak icelandic, and am unfamiliar with the culture, but i feel like icelanders would have the same fear/healthy respect for those who can put distance between themselves and their daemons as trolls and hidden folk, and would have plenty of legends surrounding them. i combined the words lost ( _farinn_ ) with soul ( _sál_ ) to mean "one who's soul is lost"

**Author's Note:**

> Riley - Morgan (Common raven)  
> Magnus - Aríela (Arctic fox)  
> Will - Deandria (German Shepard)
> 
> others to come shortly. title from 'go home' by julien baker, which is a riley theme song. raven symbolism is complicated as fuck, but i'd recommend reading up on it because it's also really interesting - death, bad luck, evil, adaptation, change.


End file.
